Posts Tagged ‘most liberal senator’

So I drag a woman walking down the sidewalk into a dark ally and tell her I would very much like to have sex with her – and it has to be done now, without debate. She refuses; no negotiation, no compromise. And of course I rape her. The question is, who is to blame for the rape?

The Republicans are like the woman; they oppose a government takeover of health care the way the woman opposes having sex with a stranger. But because they stand up for their principles and refuse to compromise their values, they get raped.

The Republicans can’t stop anything the Democrats do. Democrats have an overwhelming majority in the House, and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Demagoguing Republicans for the Democrats’ failure to come together is both absurd and immoral. It is transparently false. The only real battle going on is between liberal and conservative Democrats.

“I think early on, a decision was made by the Republican leadership that said, ‘Look, let’s not give him a victory, maybe we can have a replay of 1993, ’94, when Clinton came in, he failed on health care and then we won in the mid-term elections and we got the majority. And I think there are some folks who are taking a page out that playbook,”

It doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that Democrats haven’t offered Republicans ANYTHING they want, but only EVERYTHING they hate. It’s not about the fact that not only were Republicans shut out of crafting health care legislation, but even Blue Dog DEMOCRATS were shut out of the process.

When Democrats talk about “going solo,” they aren’t just talking about using their overwhelming majority to impose ObamaCare – because they don’t have the Democrat votes for it. Rather, they are talking about using a rare parliamentary procedure called “reconciliation”:

The debate over health care reform could be heading in a new direction. Democrats are considering going at it alone. That would mean trying to pass it without Republican support.

Caution: Relations between Dems and the GOP could get toxic.

Democrats want to use a process called reconciliation. It would only require 51 votes in the Senate to get a health care bill passed. Normally, a bill would require 60 votes to be passed. Also, with the reconciliation process, only 20 hours of debate would be allowed, no filibuster would be allowed, stamping out opposition debate.

Even Robert Byrd is adamant that reconciliation not be used to reform healthcare, as it leads down a slippery slope. Byrd is important here, because he developed the now-called Byrd Rule, that sets six conditions by which a provision can be excluded from reconciliation. This was intended to prevent abuse of the reconciliation tactic; otherwise, what stops anyone at anytime using this trick to avoid filibuster? The six conditions simply demand that if any provision of the bill is not about the budget, deficits, surpluses, or funding, then the whole package is thrown out.

This illegitimate abuse of the reconciliation as a “nuclear option” would poison any chance of bipartisanship for years – even decades – to come.

But it is well within the mindset of a president who falsely promised to be a “‘new politician’ who had risen above the partisan divide and didn’t have to lower himself into the gutter of the political past.”

[T]he Republicans can shut down the Senate for the next year. Those unfamiliar with the parliamentary procedure may not realize that a great many steps get skipped by unanimous consent. Bill-reading is just one example. One Senator can force each and every bill to be read aloud at every appearance it makes on the Senate floor, including when they are sent to committee. For ObamaCare and cap-and-trade, one bill reading could take a week, keeping the Senate floor locked off from any other business.

All Republicans can do is stand up for their conservative values, and try to rally the American people to their cause. They can’t stop the Democrats from passing a massive government takeover of health care along party lines. They can’t even mount a filibuster without Democrats crossing over to join them.

All Democrat lies aside; this isn’t about a bill that Republicans won’t support. It’s about a bill that can’t even sustain Democrat support.

If Democrats invoke the illegitimate process of a nuclear option to pass health care, they will start the nastiest war this country has seen since our Civil War in 1861. It will lead to a political climate that will be uglier than any American has ever seen in his or her lifetime.

While the White House has been floating the idea of using reconciliation to pass health care legislation with a simple majority of 51 votes, it should be seen as an empty threat. Let’s even set aside the fact that it would be a declaration of war that would shut down the Senate, that it would remove any pretense that Obama is a post-partisan president, and that ramming an unpopular bill down the throats of the public is not a politically astute move. Even if Democrats wanted to risk all of that for the greater goal of passing health care legislation, they couldn’t do it.

I hope they are right. But I will not be the least bit surprised if it isn’t an empty threat at all. Rather, what I regard as “empty” was the “post-partisan” promises (dare I say it again) of THE most liberal U.S. Senator the year before he ran for the presidency.

Be vigilant. And be ready to go absolutely ballistic if this massive violation into our constitutional democracy is rammed down our throats.

Here’s Our Energy Agenda… Where’s their plan? May 21, 2008 –
For the 14th day in a row, gas prices have reached a new high. They topped the chart at $3.80 a gallon today, and as they did House Republicans took to the steps of the Capitol to announce their plan — a plan that has the potential to cut gas to below $2 a gallon.

American families are tired of paying the Pelosi Premium — Republicans think they deserve more than the over-promising and under-delivering the Democrats have given. We have a plan to help.

The Democrats believe in “pumping sunshine.” And by “pumping sunshine” I don’t mean solar energy (believe it or not, they’re actually blocking that too); rather, I mean going on and on without having anything substantive to offer to the conversation, while pretending that they do.

Democrats have plenty of blame, plenty of demagoguing, plenty of demonizing; but they have no energy plan that will actually produce energy. It is frankly astonishing that a political party has done so much to block any legitimate solution to such a critical issue that impacts both our national security and our economy.

The Hill, in a story titled “Energy Bill Out of Gas,” contains the quintessential expression of the Democrat’s energy policy:

“Right now, our strategy on gas prices is ‘Drive small cars and wait for the wind,’ ” said a Democratic aide.

I think of Barack Obama’s meaningless-drivel of a campaign slogan and think: there’s change you can believe in! Hope for a tailwind!

These people need to go the way of the dodo bird.

Rasmussen Reports has reported that the Democrat-controlled Congress has just reached the lowest point in recorded history (beating one recent previous record after another): only 9% believe that they are doing a good job.

Think about it: as much as the media has hyped President Bush’s low approval ratings, his are still three times better than the Democrats’ ratings.

Yet somehow I keep seeing headlines saying, “Boy, that President Bush is sure unpopular,” Rather than, “Democrats have worst performance review in American political history.” I will always wonder how the Democrats would fare if the media weren’t so unrelentingly liberal.

Democrats are offering their version of a “commonsense plan” (if you appreciate self-aggrandizing fools being revealed in all their idiotic glory, you will enjoy reading Nancy Pelosi’s incredibly smarmy 2006 press release in light of today’s headlines): they will give us the “low emissions” they say we need to save the world by producing absolutely no energy at all. Just drive that small car and keep hoping for a tailwindgoing your way.

If you vote for the most liberal senator in Congress and vote for continued Democrat-domination in Congress (along with that “commonsense plan” of theirs), then you own the shockingly-high gas prices that will continue to go up, up, and away right along with all their hot-air demagoguing rhetoric.

Some of my other “offerings” on Democrats and energy (from oldest to newest).